Bianca Ojukwu, is the widow of the late former Biafran leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, and Nigeria Ambassador to Spain. In this interview with Vanguard, she reveals why she would not remarry.
It has been over a year now, since your dear husband-Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, passed on. Knowing the level of love and passion that existed between both of you, and the moving tribute you wrote, how has life been without him?
The exit of a man of his caliber means that things would never be the same because of the huge vacuum that is created by the exit. As I said in my tribute, God gave me a year to prepare, even though I had a lot of faith that he will pull through, it was an emotional roller coaster, which eventually culminated in his demise…I consider myself lucky to have had him; he loved me tremendously. As I said in my tribute, he was not just a husband, he was also a friend, a mentor and I was very protective of him. Whereas people would think that the role ought to be reversed, I was very protective of him. I was worried more about certain situations that I felt might endanger his life. We had such a strong bond and I was involved in every aspect of his life, it was like two people living one life.
I remember when doctors were asking me to leave the room when things got quite bleak and I told them I could not leave, they thought I was getting too emotional. I told them if I didn’t leave him during the best of times, I couldn’t leave him now. I told them he was not going anywhere as long as I was holding his hands. The most traumatic point was when he could no longer hear me. Even when he was struggling to stay alive, whenever he heard my voice he would look up and smile, but when he could no longer hear me, I knew it was over, and that was very traumatic. I didn’t quite expect that the exit would be so swift.
When they wanted to take him away, I refused and asked them to give me some time alone with him. I had some hours to reflect on our lives and it was difficult to imagine that he was gone. Even to the Igbo nation itself, they are finding it difficult to believe that he is gone. While he was on exile, they knew he would be back at some point, but, unfortunately, this is a final exile, and it is hard to endure. It has not been easy, because my role was almost like an appendage.
It had been very challenging, but I would say that having known him so well, being able to decode, identify and to predict what his reactions would be to any circumstance made it a little easier for me, because a lot of the organizations and communities that he was so deeply involved with feel they can count on me and expect me to play important roles – organizations like the Biafra War Veterans, among others ,the Ofalas, the Igwes, the new yam festivals, I always endeavor to attend, and, of course, same of the institutions and research centers that he was linked with, especially those abroad, because there are so many Igbo groups abroad.
I keep telling them that I am the Nigerian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain, and thus cannot be attending events every week, but they will tell me, ‘but you are the wife of our farther.’ I mean it has been very helpful the overwhelming show of support and belief in what he stood for. It has been quite challenging, but I would say that he (Ojukwu) was always keeping his eye on the bigger picture. He was very concerned about the party. He always believed that the greatest interest of the majority was paramount.
When I saw him operate, I realized that he was cast in the mould of the revolutionaries- people like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro- he was very Spartan in his way of life. He would always say to me; money is not something that you keep as a form of luxury but something you spend when you need it. He was not materialistic, money will come and go, but one’s ideological beliefs and core values remain sacrosanct. He was very much concerned about the enthronement of the ideology in the party. I thank God that one has been able to keep the legacy alive.
Given that you are still very young, beautiful and as the famed American poet-Robert Frost said, you still have a long road to travel. Do you plan to remarry?
People marry I think not just because they need to come together, live together, raise family together, it is a rite of passage and I think I have fulfilled my part. Why I said that, is, I have gone through marriage, lived with what I consider a wonderful man who gave me 23 years of happiness, of fulfillment, I literally felt I was the luckiest woman to have had a man who gave me utter dedication and, above all, wonderful children. So my pledge to him is that I will devote my life to taking care of our children, raising them properly, teaching them those ideals that he cherished and held very dear and trying to carry on his legacy. So I don’t have any compelling need to remarry and, in any case, my time is very limited; so I am trying to channel it properly towards raising my children.
How do you contain advances from men, who may nurse some romantic thoughts about you?
Nigerian men are not aggressive; they may be aggressive in business, in their career pursuits, but in that particular area of aggressively pursuing a romantic interest, I have been very impressed by the level of decency and decorum they project. I mean, it might be just my own experience. They have treated me with a lot of respect, deference-they have been protective in a way as if to say this is a treasure that we must protect. I get on flights, and I see people stand up, take my luggage to my car, they have been amazing. I haven’t encountered that sort of pursuit and I have been very touched and humbled by the way they have treated me.
My husband’s friends call me regularly to see how I am doing- I mean a lot of widows complain that that they have issues with people proposing to them. But in my own case, I must say that I have been lucky to have wonderful support system based on respect and a sense of protection. If that is a function of the respect they had for my husband, I don’t know.
When I travel abroad, I also meet Nigerian men who are respectful. I also believe that it also depends on the woman’s attitude-sometimes we lay blame at the doorstep of the men— but the fact is that if you are engaged in your work, if you are a woman who have a sense of purpose, regardless of the fact that you operate in a terrain that is dominated by men, once you can hold your own, it will be difficult to fall into that quagmire where you feel you are being propositioned or your gender is playing a derogatory role.
Once you are not making excuses for bad performance, or once you are not looking for a man to cover for you, for your inadequacies, once you are able to let you work speak for you, it’s a lot easier to survive and live a life of dignity, and once you don’t present yourself as a weak and defenseless woman- one to be pitied and really cuddled by a man just by a virtue of being of a weaker sex – then it’s much easier to live a life that is not being truncated by those pressures.
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